Depending on your needs, you can choose among the following conversion methods:
Make the conversion a part of a backup plan
When to use.
If you want the backup and the conversion to be executed on a schedule. This helps you maintain a standby virtual server ready to power on in case your physical server fails.
If you do not need to adjust the resulting virtual machine settings.
Recover the backed up disks or volumes to the "New virtual machine" destination
When to use.
If you want to do the conversion once or occasionally, as required.
If you want to do a lossless physical to virtual migration. In this case, you boot the original machine from bootable media, back up the machine in the off-line state and immediately recover the machine from the resulting backup.
If you need to adjust the resulting virtual machine settings. You may want to add or remove disks, choose the disk provisioning mode, change the volume sizes and their location on the disks, and more.
Recover the backed up disks or volumes to a manually created virtual machine by using bootable media
When to use.
If you want to create a machine directly on a virtualization server, rather than import it.
Tip. With Agent for ESX(i) or Agent for Hyper-V, a virtual machine can be created directly on a respective virtualization server by using methods (a) and (b).
If you need to recreate dynamic volumes on a Windows machine.
If you need to recreate logical volumes or software RAID on a Linux machine.